by R. L. King
“Great.” He dug in the box again, this time coming up with an envelope, which he tossed on top of the jacket box. “Oh—forgot the card.”
She opened it. It was the same silly kind of card they always traded back and forth on their birthdays, but when she opened it, she found another, smaller white envelope inside. “What’s this?”
“I dunno,” he said, shrugging. “If only there was some way to find out…”
“Dork.” She slit it open, and stared. “Jason…?”
The envelope was full of money. A lot of money, from the look of it. “What—?”
“It’s a thousand dollars,” he said. “I know you want to get back up north. It’s not enough to get you there, but put it in the bank and we can add to it when we can.”
Her hand shook, and once again she felt the prickly warmth of tears welling. “Jason, this is—too much. How did you—” She knew how much Fran paid him, and it wasn’t a lot.
“Stan doesn’t charge me much for rent at his place. I’ve been putting some aside. Don’t worry—I can afford it. But don’t expect that much again for a while, unfortunately, unless I win the lottery. And since I don’t play, odds aren’t looking good.”
“Jason, I—thanks, big bro.” She leaned forward and pulled him into a hug. He was right: a thousand dollars wasn’t even close to what she’d need to make the move. But it was a damn good start, and she knew having it sitting in the bank would encourage her to work her tail off to add to it.
“Hey, I gotta look after my little sister somehow, right? Especially since she doesn’t need me to beat up bullies for her anymore.” He pulled back and nodded toward the box. “One more. Not a gift, but something I think you’ll like.”
Stone cleared his throat softly. “Before you get to that,” he said. “If I may…” He’d been sitting in contemplative silence, sipping his drink and watching Verity open her gifts without comment.
“Yeah, sure,” Jason said. “I kinda wanted to save this for last anyway, so go for it, Al.”
Stone retrieved his coat from the back of his chair and withdrew a small, flat wrapped box from the inside pocket. “I thought you might like this.”
She opened it to reveal a simple white-gold chain bracelet, elegant without being overly feminine, resting on black satin—a piece that would match her goth/punk tastes, but, like the jacket Jason had given her, with a more adult aesthetic. “Thanks, Doc. It’s beautiful.”
“Remember your eighteenth?” Stone asked.
She tilted her head, confused, but then light dawned. She shifted to magical sight, and a bright aura sprang up around the bracelet. “Oh, wow.”
“I’ve put a more robust enchantment on it this time, so it should survive anything short of a conflagration. It should give you a bit more power. That reminds me,” he added. “Have you and Jason ever gotten ’round to practicing together?”
For a moment she wasn’t sure what he meant. “Oh, right. The power-battery thing. Not yet. We barely see each other these days, and I don’t think Edna’s crazy about the idea anyway. She thinks I should be generating my own power.”
“Fair enough,” Stone said, nodding. “Right, then. So—one more gift. And, like Jason, I’ve got something that isn’t a gift as well. First things first, though—” He took something else from the inner coat pocket, and slid it across the table toward her.
She looked down at it, frowning. It was a photograph, showing a small, sporty black SUV parked in front of Stone’s townhouse in Palo Alto. Her eyes widened, and she gasped.
He hadn’t.
He couldn’t have.
…Could he?
“Doc—you—did you—” She shot a look at Jason, who appeared as surprised as she did.
Stone waved them both off. “Do you like it? One of my colleagues was selling it. It’s a few years old, but it’s got all its maintenance ducks in a row, and no accidents.”
“Al, you got her a car?” Jason gaped at him in shock.
“It’s all right, isn’t it?”
Verity didn’t trust herself to speak. Her hands shook. She glanced up at the long-extinguished candle on the top of her little chocolate cake and rethought her estimates of how powerful wishes could be. But still—
“I can’t take it,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s too much. Please. You can’t—”
“Well, I’ve already bought it, and I’ve got no need for it. So if you don’t take it, I’ll just have to sell it. You wouldn’t make me do that, would you? I hate running adverts and dealing with calls, and people, and—” He shrugged. “You’ll have to come up north and retrieve it, though. I’ll look after it for you until you can make it.”
“Doc—”
He looked impatient. “Verity. You only turn twenty-one once. You need transportation, you don’t have a lot of funds right now, and you’re my apprentice, which means I’ve taken on some responsibility for your well-being. Please. Let me do this for you.”
She looked at him, then at Jason, then down at her hands. She wanted to accept Stone’s offer more than anything—having her own vehicle meant she wouldn’t have to borrow Edna’s old truck anymore, and that, if she ended up staying in southern California a while longer, she could at least get out to do what she wanted without feeling like she had to ask Jason to drive her.
But then she remembered the conversation she’d had with her brother only a few days ago: he’s my magic teacher, not my sugar daddy. Did every magic teacher buy his apprentice a car? And then there was the matter of the look she wasn’t even sure had passed between them a little while ago.
She glanced at Jason, suddenly feeling a lot younger than twenty-one, and unsure how to proceed. “Jason? What do you think?”
He looked as troubled and uncertain as she did, though.
Stone sighed. “All right. I’m honestly not sure what the problem is, but let me drop the other shoe. I had a little chat with Edna, and she’s told me she’s got the impression that perhaps you might be ready to wrap up your studies with her. Is that true?”
Verity took a deep breath. “It’s…complicated,” she said after a moment.
“How complicated can it be? Either you do or you don’t, right?”
“Yes…and no.”
Stone leaned back in his chair and took another sip of his drink, then crossed his arms over his chest. “Edna’s perceptive, and she’s nowhere close to stupid. Are you two not getting on?”
“It’s not that. Edna’s great…mostly.”
“Mostly?”
“What she’s teaching me is great,” she said, feeling disloyal for even speaking. “We mostly get along really well—don’t get in each other’s business, you know? And I feel like the style of magic I’ve learned from her is the way I’m meant to go. But…”
Stone waited.
“Well…we don’t have a lot in common, really, other than magic. And…” She let out a sigh, feeling even more like a rat. “I think I need a little more…variety in my life.”
“You want to be where the action is,” Stone said. “That’s understandable. Ojai is a lovely little town, but for someone like you I could see it being a bit…stifling.”
“Yeah,” she said miserably, not looking at him. “That, and…I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, and I’ve decided what I want to do for a job.” She glanced sideways at Jason. She hadn’t even mentioned this to him, and hadn’t planned to bring it up now. She wondered how he’d react.
“Indeed?” Stone asked, while Jason looked at her in surprise.
“Yeah.” Another glance at Jason, this one apologetic. “Sorry to bring up bad memories, Jason…but after what happened the other night, I’ve decided I want to look into what it would take to become an EMT, like Kristen.”
Stone raised an eyebrow. “Jason
mentioned what happened when he called me about coming down here. It must have made quite an impression on you.”
“No shit,” Jason said. “V, you didn’t tell me—”
“I wanted to be sure,” she said. “But I think as I get better with magic, if I’m careful I might be able to slip in a little healing sometimes—maybe save some people who might have died, like the guy on the bike. You know, without anybody finding out. Plus it will get me out in the world instead of being stuck inside all day, and I think the variety will be good for me.”
Jason’s eyes narrowed. “That sounds pretty tricky. What if somebody did find out?”
She shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about the details tonight, okay? But…the thing is…if I do it, I don’t want to do it down here.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t want to take the chance of crossing paths with the woman Jason broke up with over you and your ‘weirdness,’” Stone said softly when she paused.
“Yeah.” She picked at the edge of the envelope Jason had given her. “I know, it’s stupid, but—”
“So,” Stone said, “the bottom line is you’ve got quite a number of valid reasons for wanting to move back to the Bay Area.”
She nodded. “And one really big one not to. Well, two, if you count money, but mostly I’d feel bad leaving you down here by yourself, Jason. You’ve done so much for me, helped me out so many ways—”
“V—”
Stone held up a hand. “Forgive me for interrupting again, but this might be relevant.” He faced her. “Verity, I told you before, when you decided to stay down here and study with Edna, that any time you wanted to come back to me, you were welcome. That still stands. I still consider you my apprentice. I still think I can teach you quite a lot in your last year, and perhaps you can teach me a few things as well. Do you agree?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“Then if you want to come back, I’ll make the arrangements.” He glanced at Jason. “I don’t want to get between you two, though, if you’d rather stay here. That’s the last thing I want to do.”
“You won’t be,” Jason said firmly. “I’m doing what I want down here—as long as V was too, that was great. But I’ve still got almost two years to go before I can take the test. If she’d rather be somewhere else, there’s no way I’m gonna ask her to stay here and put her life on hold just to wait for me.” He took her hand. “You do what you gotta do, V. I’ll help make it happen too. And it’s not like we’ll be a million miles apart. I’ll just have to make time to come up there more often.” Grinning at Stone, he added, “Sorry, Al, but she’s a bigger draw than you are.”
“One would hope so,” Stone said dryly. “And Verity, if you decide you want to study to be an EMT, I’m certain there are quite a number of places you can do that. We might have to fiddle with schedules a bit to find time to fit in your magic training, but we’ll manage. Sleep is overrated anyway.”
Verity could barely believe she was hearing all this. “You’re serious? Both of you?”
“Hell yeah,” Jason said. “You gotta live your life, V, not just wait around for me.”
Stone nodded. “Of course. I’m surprise you ever doubted it.”
“But—where would I live? I really don’t think it’s a good idea to move in with you, Doc. Do you?”
“Probably not,” he agreed. “Although if you wanted to house-sit for me for a few days in a couple of weeks or so and look after Raider, I wouldn’t turn it down. If you can manage it, it might be a good time to pick up your car, and you could take the time to investigate some programs and living situations up there. We can discuss details when I return.”
“You going home for Christmas?”
He chuckled. “I wish. No, I’ve been roped into consulting on one of those paranormal television shows. We’ll be up in some godforsaken little ghost town called Brunderville for a few days shooting the episode.”
“No shit?” Jason grinned. “You, on TV? I want to know how they managed that.”
“Which one?” Verity asked, her curiosity momentarily overshadowing her feelings of shock and amazement that everything was suddenly moving so quickly.
“The Other Side.”
“I’ve seen that show!” She punched his arm lightly. “You’re gonna be a celebrity, Doc. Can I have your autograph? You know, before you get famous and forget about all us little people?”
“Sod off,” he said sourly. “Jason, didn’t you have something else to give Verity?”
“Oh! Yeah. Almost forgot.” He fumbled in the box again, this time removing a shoebox that looked even more elderly than the larger one. “Like I said, this isn’t a gift, not really. Stan was cleaning out his garage and found it. He doesn’t even remember why he had it anymore.”
She took the dusty old box from him, and as soon as she touched it, she knew with a certainty she couldn’t explain that it contained something to do with her mother. Her gaze came up for a second to meet his, and then she pulled the top off.
Inside were dozens of photographs, jumbled together in no discernible order. She could see that most of them were snapshots, while a few larger ones appeared to have been taken in a studio. All of them were faded and dusty from their time in Stan Lopez’s garage. She stared at the top one. “Mom and Dad,” she said softly.
“Yeah. I didn’t look through them much, but I think they’re all from a year or two before Mom died. There might be some in there you haven’t seen before.”
She nodded, only half-hearing him as she began pulling them out and placing them, one by one, on the table in a stack. Jason was right: she hadn’t seen most of them before. She had plenty of photos of her parents, of course—photos and other family mementos were some of the few things Jason had salvaged before selling the family home to pay off their father’s debts after he died. But these, unlike most of the ones she had, didn’t depict homey family scenes of her parents, young Jason, and herself as a baby. Instead, they showed her parents in a very different light: attending events both alone and together with no sign of their children.
Verity was vaguely aware of Jason and Stone chatting about Stone’s TV project and the logistics of Verity’s potential move, but as she paged through the photos she became more focused on these unknown scenes from her parents’ adult life: police functions, dinners where they were both formally dressed, parties.
A familiar twinge of regret struck her as she turned up a more staged portrait of her mother—with her dark hair and impish, sly grin, the resemblance to her daughter was obvious and unmistakable. She looked into the eyes so much like her own and swallowed hard. This woman, Lenore Thayer, was the source of her own magical power. Her husband, Verity’s father, had apparently never known anything about her abilities, nor had Jason. How odd, to keep such an important part of herself secret from those she loved the most.
She studied the image a moment longer before adding it to the stack. Was her mother already suffering from the illness that would later kill her, or was this taken before Verity was even born? There was no date on the back, so she couldn’t be sure. She tore her gaze from it and moved on to the next photo.
This one had been taken outdoors, on a green, rocky plain under an overcast sky. It didn’t look like anywhere Verity had seen in the Ventura County area. Had they been on vacation, perhaps? But if that were true, why wasn’t her father among the several other people in the photo? Had he been the one taking it, maybe? There was her mother, off to the left side, wearing a heavy sweater, jeans, and boots, her hair windblown. On her left was a plump, older woman in a wool skirt and shawl; on her right, she had her arm companionably around the thin shoulders of a tall young man with unruly dark hair, who grinned at the camera in the self-conscious manner of teenage boys everywhere. Something about the boy looked slightly familiar, though she knew she mus
t be mistaken—how could she recognize someone her mother had known when she was a baby, or not even born yet?
She was about to add the photo to the stack and move on to the next one when the recognition suddenly hit her. She snatched the photo back up and squinted at it, then laughed. “This is you!” she announced, waving it at Stone.
“What?” he asked, confused.
“It’s you!” she said, still grinning. “In this picture! Next to my mom. Isn’t it?”
Stone took it from her and examined it for only a couple seconds. “Damned if it isn’t,” he said, astonished. “Bloody hell, I didn’t think any of these had survived.”
“Let me see that,” Jason demanded. He plucked the photo from Stone’s hand and studied it, looking back and forth between it and Stone. “Holy crap,” he said at last. “It is.”
“Where was that taken?” Verity asked, already flipping through the rest of the photos quickly to see if she could find any others. “It doesn’t look like it’s around here.”
“It was in England,” Stone said. He reclaimed the photo from Jason. “Near Stonehenge, I think. Your mum had come over for some sort of mage gathering. I was seventeen—almost done with my apprenticeship.”
“Look at you,” Verity said. She couldn’t seem to stop smiling. Seeing her cool, confident mentor as a gangly, grinning teenager forged a different sort of connection between them than she was used to. “So skinny. And that haircut!”
“Oi,” he said in mock indignation. “I’ll have you know that was considered quite stylish in those days.”
She grabbed it back and looked at the two of them together. Her mother must have been a little younger than Stone was now, but like Stone himself, she didn’t look it. She wasn’t entirely sure how old Stone was and didn’t think it was polite to ask—he had to be close to forty now, but if she didn’t know him she’d have guessed early thirties. She wondered if mages just aged more slowly than mundanes. Her mother’s resemblance to Verity was even more uncanny in this photo than it had been in the staged one. If she squinted a little, she could picture herself standing next to the teenage Stone. “Did you really have a crush on Mom?”
